


what you have and what you lost

by j_quadrifrons



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Breaking Up & Making Up, Divorce, Elias's paperwork fetish, Lonely Eyes, M/M, Marriage, Peter's total lack of self preservation, five times fic, lonely/beholding dynamics, romance is tough when you have a demanding fear god to appease, this was supposed to be a crack fic, unexpectedly sad for lonely eyes, until the last couple parts, vague timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 12:07:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_quadrifrons/pseuds/j_quadrifrons
Summary: Five Times Peter and Elias got divorced (and one time they didn't)





	what you have and what you lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WitchyBee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchyBee/gifts).



> [podcastenthusiast asked for a five times fic](https://podcastenthusiast.tumblr.com/post/185343017678/we-need-one-of-those-cute-5-1-style-fics-but-with) and no one else was doing it so
> 
> (you bet your ass the title is from Dreams by Fleetwood Mac)

**1.** The first time they get divorced it's the culmination of a two week long argument about how to load the dishwasher. Neither of them have ever loaded a dishwasher (Peter certainly doesn't own one; Elias has staff for that) but it's the principle of the thing, and the fact that Peter will not stop arguing. And the fact that he seems to be _enjoying_ the argument, his eyes glinting with the same delight he brings to their bed every time he says something that's clearly calculated to get on Elias's very last nerve.

Peter isn't taking this seriously, and the fact that Elias knows very well that it isn't serious is doing nothing to calm his temper. After a few days they stop speaking without arguing, stop arguing only to fuck. Elias finds himself working harder and harder to push Peter to the point of actual anger, to see his eyes go cold and distant before he puts his hands on Elias's shoulders and bites a mark into Elias's throat, the cold of Forsaken filling the space between their skin even as Elias tangles his hands in Peter's hair.

(Physics and philosophy agree, Elias had told him once, long before Peter had proposed, that no two beings can ever actually touch; the space between atoms is vast and half of that distance always leaves a distance that can be halved again. Peter had laughed, kissed his hand gallantly, and asked him why, then, he blushed.)

In truth it isn't the disagreement or even the teasing that drives Elias to distraction but the disrespect. Elias knows that Beholding is not well regarded among the other servants of the great Powers, and he is accustomed to their dismissal but hearing it in his husband's voice is a step too far. Simon was right, marrying an avatar of the Lonely was a terrible idea.

He draws up the paperwork himself, though he sends it to his solicitor for review. It comes back with a note about provisions in the prenup, which Elias discards without reading. He leaves the papers on the coffee table and when he comes home from work the documents are signed and Peter is gone.

Elias listens to _Sea Symphony_ for a month before he deletes it from his playlist and switches to Bach.

 

  
**2.** The second time they get divorced Elias knows better than to talk to Peter directly. The paperwork is waiting for him at the docks where the _Tundra_ is scheduled to arrive. If there was an argument Elias can no longer remember it, the details faded into the background of their routine sarcasm and professional antagonism. What hardens his resolve is the cold fog on the river in the mornings, the echoing silence of his flat when he arrives home at night. Loneliness is one thing; masochism has never been Elias's style.

("Afraid you'll be lonely?" Peter had asked, two weeks after their second wedding, when Elias had made a sharp comment about his impending departure. They were seated at an outdoor café in Covent Garden and Peter was holding Elias's right hand loosely in his left, stroking the ridge of his knuckles with a thumb. He still had that teasing note in his voice, that glint in his eye, although Elias knew the question was all in earnest.

"I'm never lonely," he'd said calmly, quirking an eyebrow and showing no emotion, though his stomach churned with emotions he'd have to take the time to catalog later. "My patron wouldn't allow it."

"Alone isn't the same as lonely," Peter had said, but he had dropped the issue. Instead he'd spent the rest of the evening not quite making eye contact, a deliberate provocation which Elias refused to admit proved his point for him. He'd woken up alone in a cold bed the next morning and spent ten minutes quietly and methodically cursing at the empty room until Peter returned, laughing at nothing and everything, with coffee and pastries.)

The man is a menace, honestly; even his family can't stand him. He takes up entirely too much space - even though he hasn't been in the flat in months, Elias keeps finding stray socks in corners - he knows everyone and is not ashamed of leveraging his acquaintances for the most menial of favors, he has truly appalling taste in music. He has no manners and no sense of restraint. Elias doesn't invite Peter to come pick up his things, nor does he send them back. He leaves a box in the front of his walk-in closet so he remembers to enjoy having control of his own space at last.

 

  
**3.** Their third marriage lasts all of three weeks, and that only because it takes two for the solicitors to _find_ Peter again after he disappears less than twelve hours into their honeymoon. Elias takes Peter's passport with him when he catches a flight back to London. It won't cause Peter more than a minor inconvenience, but he can't resist. When he looks back at the wedding photos, Elias has to admit that he should have known it was too soon. In not one picture do they look at each other.

He keeps the ring. Together with the first, he has it melted down and recast into a nazar which he hangs behind his office door.

(The next time they meet Elias ties Peter to the bed, face in the pillows and legs spread, open, exposed, Seen. He leaves Peter there untouched until his moans and pleas take on a note of true desperation, all pretense stripped away before the unwavering gaze of the Eye. It isn't revenge, exactly, but it bleeds off some of Elias's lingering anger. It is years before Peter proposes again; years more before Elias says yes.)

 

  
**4.** The fourth time is a surprise. Peter storms into Elias's office at the Institute - a place he always avoids, he claims for fear Nathaniel will force him to sit on the board again - boiling with rage. "Do you have any idea," he spits, "what that - that _woman_ has done?"

Elias hadn't, actually, but given the current circumstances he can guess. Gertrude is very good at hiding her actions from him but their consequences tend to be fairly obvious.

Still. They don't talk about their duties to their patrons; that has been an unspoken rule between them from the beginning. Only one ritual can be seen to completion, after all, and though Forsaken and Beholding might be allies against their more aggressive enemies, they are not so close that they might bring one another to realization. Elias has not given up on the Watcher's Crown -- but neither had he realized that Peter's ritual was ready.

And if he has any feelings about that lack of knowledge they will have to wait. He folds his hands on his desk and fixes Peter with a steady look, one that here, in the seat of Beholding's power, even he can't evade. "I've told you before, Peter," he says, cold and even to balance Peter's rage, "I can't be held responsible for everything the Archivist does in her spare time."

"Spare time," Peter scoffs. He starts pacing, circling the office with that irrepressible urge he has to touch everything that comes into arms reach. "As if you don't encourage her. As if you haven't given her everything she needs to go around blowing up everybody else's hard work--"

Elias makes a mental note to check for news reports of unplanned demolitions. "You can't say you haven't benefited," he says, well aware his excessively reasonable tone will only feed Peter's irritation. "The Sunken Sky--"

"A childish effort and you know it," Peter snaps back. "Honestly, what Scott thinks he's doing in America I'll never understand. I don't care about Too-Close-I-Cannot-Breathe and neither do you. Your Archivist," and this he snarls, turning back to face Elias, "put paid to two hundred years of preparations in a day, and you didn't have the decency to offer even a warning of what she was planning."

Ah, there's one of those feelings he was hoping to deal with later. The needling reminder of Gertrude's independence, her unwillingness to submit to the demands of Beholding, combined with the injustice of Peter's anger, kick together at a weak place in him and Elias says without thinking, "Why would you imagine you have the right to a warning?"

For the length of the still space between heartbeats there is a look in Peter's eyes that speaks of deep hurt, fathomless as the sea. Then they go distant, and the bottom drops out of Elias's stomach as he Knows what comes next.

"You're so bloody prepared for everything," Peter snarls, his retreat into the embrace of his god having barely tempered his anger. "Bet you have those divorce papers all drawn up, don't you? So you can pretend it was all your idea this time too. Let's save your solicitor some time, then, I'll sign whatever you've got."

Elias does have the papers ready, although they weren't really waiting. There is a feeling that comes with Peter, with being tied to him, like he has tethered himself to an anchor that is falling overboard and he is only waiting for the line to play out before it pulls him under. Sometimes he needs to know he has a knife to hand.

He throws them down on his desk before Peter can see - before he has to acknowledge - that his hands are shaking.

(Two weeks after Gertrude's murder, Elias sees Peter for the first time since the scene in his office. Seeing him is all it is, a glimpse of the man smoking a cigar on a hotel balcony, gazing off across the Thames, but Elias knows full well it was only because Peter allowed it. When they meet, supposedly by chance, several days later, neither of them apologize. They never will.)

 

  
**5.** The Unknowing is immanent, his Archivist is missing, and Elias is sorting through files. There's nothing else to _do_ , nothing to _See_ , and at least in the privacy of his office he can expend his nervous energy without distracting the remaining Archives staff from their work.

But it's been two weeks, and he's run out of Institute files. His personal papers are significantly less of a distraction from his current worries than the past two decades of budget documents, but he's desperate. Elias lingers over a file labeled, cryptically, "B-L." It isn't alphabetized. Marriage and divorce both take a surprising amount of paperwork, especially for people like them. They've gotten good at it, at least, he thinks with a smile as he pages through the most recent set of documents.

And pauses. Efficiency seems to have gone a little too far, there. The usual set of financial details and agreements is missing from the prenuptial contract. Actually, the entire prenuptial contract is missing. (Joining a family as old as the Lukases was never anything less than a production, but Peter had been eager to avoid his family, Elias remembers, though he hadn't said why. Elias, never enthusiastic about the idea of more than one Lukas at a time, hadn't asked. Besides, Peter had been making promises that they were both impatient to see fulfilled; they'd practically eloped, in the end.)

He's struck with an idea and gives it only a few moments' consideration before firing off an email to his financial adviser and another one to his solicitor. Peter's been gone for six months and with a little luck the whole thing can be settled before he gets back. Chances are he'll find it amusing, and besides, it's about time Elias managed to turn some sort of profit from the situation.

 

  
**+1.** "I want a divorce," Peter says, stepping out of the Lonely into Elias's prison cell.

It isn't visiting hours, but that's never stopped anyone around here, apparently. "We're not actually married at the moment," Elias reminds him.

Peter frowns. "Yes, we are, we had the wedding in, um..." He counts on his fingers, notices the lack of a wedding band and shoves his hands in his pockets. Elias snorts. "That's not the point. Your Institute is a nightmare of insubordination, Elias, I don't know how you manage it."

"Not very well, apparently." Elias raises his hands, and all right, there's enough slack in the shackles for him to use his hands almost normally but the look on Peter's face when he offers them up, wrists together, in a gesture almost like supplication, is too good to pass up.

As predicted, his eyes flash with interest before he remembers he's supposed to be annoyed. "So you thought you'd leave me to deal with it instead?"

Elias shrugs. It makes the chains on his shackles rattle, which in turn makes Peter's gaze grow heated again. He suppresses a smile, then gives up and lets it out as a smirk. Peter laughs.

"You know," he says, shrugging out of his coat and beginning on the buttons of his shirt as he wraps the cell in a blanket of isolating fog, "if you want me back you only have to ask."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please come yell about TMA with me, I have too many feelings  
> [@j_quadrifrons](https://twitter.com/j_quadrifrons), [backofthebookshelf](https://backofthebookshelf.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] what you have and what you lost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22079821) by [stardust_podfics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_podfics/pseuds/stardust_podfics)




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